


Sanguinity

by jpnadia



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Blood, F/M, Not Romance, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:21:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28203765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jpnadia/pseuds/jpnadia
Summary: The thin light of dawn seeped over the horizon like the dyed packets of pear juice that they're supposed to give to donors after a feeding. The Warden has never bothered, not with me.In a universe where necromancers are vampires and cavaliers are werewolves, Camilla Hect persuades her vampire to eat.
Relationships: Camilla Hect/Palamedes Sextus
Comments: 8
Kudos: 33





	Sanguinity

The thin light of dawn seeped over the horizon like the dyed packets of pear juice that they're supposed to give to donors after a feeding. The Warden has never bothered, not with me. 

He was in the library, hidden in the closed-off tower we’d found together when I was nine years and eight months old and he was nine years and five. I would know even if I couldn't smell him through the tiny window he’d cracked open for ventilation. He never missed a chance to catch up on his reading, and no one checks curfew on full moon. I hosed off my muzzle and traded my four legs in for two. They started making all the corridors wolf-accessible three hundred years ago, but our tower was built three hundred years before that.

"It's perfect," I'd told him at the time.

"But you're a wolf." They didn't know it at the time, but the Warden's senses were keen, even then. Back then, I'd never shifted, and he hadn't yet turned, but we knew ourselves and we knew each other. Back then, I thought that knowledge was all that mattered.

“I’ll shift.” I’d pressed the heel of my palm into the flagstone walls. It came away dusty. The accessibility standards said that door handles should be lever-based and corridors wide enough for two wolves to stand abreast, shoulder to shoulder, and the spiral staircase up barely accommodated us single file when we were human. Facility maintenance will lock up your lab if it doesn't meet code. It's for safety. “I don’t mind,” I told him.

On the Sixth, everyone has a story of a wolf who's gone into an inaccessible corridor and gotten wedged somewhere for days until the moon shifted and the wolf-form broke free. On the wane cycle, when everyone’s trapped inside and ready to chew off their own arms for the hunt, they swap them like gumballs. The older and the more unique, the better. Worst case scenario, I’d get stuck in the stairwell for a day or two until the Warden tried to get to his books and found me. Wouldn’t be the least advisable thing I’d ever done for him.

* * *

When I got back to the castle, I bundled into the robe I'd tucked away for myself in the back of the closet. They provide robes for wolves fresh off the hunt in the castle vestibule, nondescript grey things that reek of the unscented detergent they use in the public laundries. It's supposed to be easy on the nose. It doesn't work.

I wouldn't care about making my way through the corridors naked, but I always carry things for him-- a measuring tape, pins, bandages, a pocket torch-- and my robes have good pockets. Doesn't hurt that I can wash them in my own soap.

It didn't take me long to find him, because he hasn't moved since I smelled him through the window. The air here always tastes like old books tinged with rust. That's from the broken humidity control-- the Warden jury-rigged a fix for it before he brought a single book up, but the pipes had rusted long before that. He offered to fix those, too, but I had already gotten used to them.

As I expected, he was hunched over the thick wooden desk, spectacles askew. An unassuming figure, like a stick poking out of the riverbank that will bend when you brush by it but whip back across your shoulder and leave a mark across your flank if you don't watch how you pass. 

He was the Warden, and he could have commanded any space in the building. But this space was ours.

I shut the door loudly, in case he was so deep in study he didn't hear my  thudding heartbeat. He didn't look up from the long column of data he was reviewing. "What did you take?"

Not every hunt succeeds. I swiped at my jaw to see where I'd messed up. The back of my hand came back bloody. Careless. I'd do better the next time.

"A buck." They make sure the deer population is strong enough to support us, but accidents happen. You fill out a green form if you accidentally eat a doe, but it's a pain.

"By yourself?" he asked, pride warming his voice. He already knew the answer. 

It wasn't a big one. The records would be out the following day.  I shrugged and moved on to a more pressing concern. "Have you eaten?"

He looked at me with consternation. "Cam, I've nearly compiled the venom property data from last week's collection, which might have  _ applications _ , and you're asking me if I've eaten?"

"You can't do the math if you pass out from hunger," I pointed out, and let my robe drop to give him access to my veins. I was still sweaty from the hunt, but the Warden never cared about that. It was always a lot harder to get the blood into him if he wasn't conscious to drink it.  


I propped a hip up on his desk, putting my body between him and his work, and settled in to wait.

No one ever made a big deal out of his eating habits. Sometimes, I wished they would. Most vampires had at least two or three donors-- wolves or humans, it didn't matter. The only difference is that wolves recover faster. He only had me.

It wasn't a scandal, even though we're second cousins. You can marry one of your donors if the genetic compatibility works out, but it's not compulsory. With the consanguinity situation on the Sixth, all the vampires would starve if they couldn't feed from anyone related to them. 

We only had donor-marriages if a wolf from another house didn't mind that their offspring would belong to the Sixth. Happens more often than you'd think. Up until Palamedes took charge, Sixth vampires got trained in persuasion even before their fangs descended. There's plenty of vampires in the castle who still follow the old ways.

I asked him once if he'd ever considered finding another donor.

"That gets messy," he’d told me. "I’m glad I have you."

When he realized I wasn't going to move from his desk until he ate, he grumbled, but he set aside his tablet. That was so it wouldn't get my sweat or my blood on it, which might distract him later. Then he reached for me. I was glad that I didn't have to argue with him. The hunt had taken more out of me than I cared to admit.

Before I could brace, his teeth sliced into my throat with nothing to numb the pain. He never uses the venoms himself. Says they're an insult to independent will. I wouldn't know. No one but him has ever fed from me.

"You taste like adrenaline," he told me.

"Don't talk with your mouth full." There was a faint suggestion of pink around his lips, which were still too pale. Blood trickled down my clavicle.

He lowered his head, licked over the thin red dribble, and began to drink in earnest. I closed my eyes. I could see the familiar bob of his throat behind my eyelids.

My body reacted to the pain, and I arched under him. I like it best right after the hunt, when my belly is full of red meat and my veins are full of endorphins. It's sheer pleasure, like he's carved all the nerve endings out of my body and applied just the right amount of pressure to make them spark. I was starting to drip, slick down my thighs.

He didn't react. He must have been able to smell it, but he had never ascribed meaning to it. I used to think he'd notice someday and do something about it. Not anymore.

This was enough. It was enough to have him here, with the scent of old books and rust and fresh ink and blood around us. His lips worked on my throat, and I came, untouched, again and again. Before I learned to control my reactions, he had to hold me still so I wouldn't accidentally nick an important artery on his teeth.

At last, he finished. I didn't whine. When he made his mind up about something, there was never any stopping him.

Instead, I pulled an adhesive bandage from the pocket of my robe and offered it to him. He affixed it to my neck, even though he'd already licked the wounds closed.

"You need to eat more," I told him, gruff. My limbs felt like I was swimming in syrup, even though I was still propped against his desk.

"There's no one like you," he said. We had this argument at least twice a week. After feedings, I was always too fucked-out to keep up my end of it.

Palamedes never got anything out of feeding: That was his problem. 

I'll always keep going back for more. That's mine.


End file.
